A Winning Day

I studied the form for hours a matter of seconds before declaring that ‘Shocking’ was going to win the Cup.  Being the huge gambler I am, I suggested 50 cents each way would be an appropriate bet.  Man-child doesn’t do baby bets like me so bet $5 for me so I won just over $100.  It was the only bet I had for the day, not a bad result for a few seconds research!

Here are a few more reasons why today was a great day of fun in the sun, or in the shade under the trees on the soft green grass as the case may be.

Someone to serve food

Relaxing in the Shade

Girls Hiding in the Trees

It was an awesome day.  There were 5 families enjoying the day in the park.  Not only was it much more fun being in the park but they changed the camera angles for the main race and you couldn’t really see our house!

Melbourne Madness

Racing fever has hit town and the neighbourhood is alive.  Now normally it is hectic around here, but for a change it is and not just my house that is crazy but the whole area.  You see we live just up the road from Flemington Racecourse.   In fact we are so close we can hear the race calls from our house.  As you can imagine with 100,000 people converging on your suburb, traffic is always going to be crazy so we stay local.

Traditionally we would wander down to a park and sit in the sunshine with dozens of other locals who don’t want to brave the insanity of traffic and transport.  A friend drags his tv and lounge suite out to the park, we bring over our old bbq (actually come to think of it, I think it is still there from last year!), a shade gazebo and a laptop to ensure that we can keep up to date with the race odds.  It is a great day, the kids all play cricket or frisbee, climb trees and ride bikes and we all sit around eating and drinking.  Generally we are in the park from late morning and go home as the sky darkens having overindulged all day long.  We have been doing this for the past 2 years with plans to do it again tomorrow.

That was until we saw the weather forecast.   City - Shower or two. Windy.  Min 17, Max 20

That doesn’t bode well for electronic equipment in the middle of a park.  Apparently the tv in the park has been cancelled so now what to do?  We could still go to the park without the tv but being able to watch the race is what set this picnic apart from other picnics in the area.  The location is so central that many people walking to the races walk by and have been known to join in on the festivities.  The other option is to just open our house again and have everyone come over here.  It will still be fun but not the same without a park for the kids to play in.

Regardless of all the planning, the weather can change again and it probably will.  Today it was supposed to be windy and also have thunderstorms.  Now there is a slight breeze and beautiful blue skies.  There were a few showers earlier in the day but they have been and gone and it is now the perfect day outside.   I am happy to just make it up as we go along, and make any decisions in relation to moving furniture out to the park tomorrow but I think others like to have some real plans about what to do for the day.  I wonder if we could just say if we aren’t in the park we will be here and cross our fingers and hope for the rain to hold off.

Who knows where we will end up.  If you do happen to watch the Melbourne Cup, the Race that Stops a Nation look our for us.  When they are showing overhead views of the track you will see where I live.  Perhaps if we do end up celebrating the day here at home, I might see if I can get the kids all in the backyard with balloons or something equally as colourful to see if you can see them!

Weekly Winners #7 – Happy Halloween

Halloween really isn’t a big deal around here but all the kids know about it and want to get in on the action.  However I really don’t want them wandering around the neighbourhood begging for treats.  There was an organised group of people trick or treating that we could have joined but they weren’t starting until 7 and that was going to equate to another really late night.  Instead we had a picnic in the park with anyone who wanted to join in on the fun.  We hid lollies in the garden beds for a treasure hunt, had scary food and watched dozens of kids run around in costumes having fun.  It wasn’t a typical Halloween celebration but it was fun.

This is girl-child normally.

And now girl-child as Elphaba from Wicked.

Happy Halloween.

 

Weekly Winners #6

After a yet another crazy, exhausting, glad-it-is-over kind of week, it is time to move on.  More things that have made me happy this weekend…

Spring is finally here, summer is on the way and the weather was beautiful.  We had to drag out the umbrellas to make sure that we didn’t all cook in the back yard.  I am really looking forward to backyard barbies all summer long.

Ready for Summer

Exploring Docklands and all the art installations.  This one of girl-child’s favourite.

Balancing Act

Then there is my favourite sculpture I love the Cow in a Tree.

Cow in a Tree

And finally, the purchase of the day – an early Christmas present, paintings of Melbourne already hanging on our wall!

Beautiful Melbourne

Another great weekend, I wonder what the new week has in store?

Happy to be 6 or Weekly Winners #5 (a few days late)

I think that girl-child is happy to be 6!

Waking up as a 6 year old.

She was so excited to finally be 6, she couldn’t stop smiling.

Reading a Birthday Card

Instead of ripping through the presents she stopped to read a card.

ooooh, Shiny!

I bet I know what this is – I bet it is a new charm for my bracelet, yay.

Hooray!

Looking at the photos, girl-child had a great birthday playing with her friends all afternoon in the park, enjoying the sunshine.

When I tucked her in to bed tonight I asked her if she liked being 6.  I expected that she would gush about how much fun it is but instead she became quite introspective, paused for a second and then said she didn’t want to be 6.  She went on to explain that she couldn’t be everywhere when she is 6 and it isn’t fair that she has to share herself, she wants to be 0, 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 all at the same time.  Her reasoning was that if she could be all those different ages she could share herself with more people, that she could play with all her friends at the one time and everyone would have much more fun.

Happy birthday my beautiful Boo, I can’t believe that you are 6 already.  I love you, thanks for being so much fun.

Normalish?

Well I am finally heading towards normal.  It is Sunday afternoon and all is quiet and dare I say ‘drama free’ in the house.  Girl-child and a friend are upstairs destroying playing quietly in her bedroom.  Boy-child is outside playing wii with our latest family addition (the new student arrived safely this morning), man-child has wandered over to a friends for a drop of red and I am sitting down to enjoy a drop of red also, relaxing to some great music, smelling the wonderful aromas of dinner gently simmering on the stove.  Mmmm, red chicken curry.

Today has also included a flying trip to Ikea to get a desk and chair.  In the 90 minute round trip I managed to get the items I required, plus a laptop bag, 1 1/2 dozen glasses, a desk lamp, power boards, napkins for tomorrows picnic in the park if the rain holds off, as well as stopping by the florist for some much needed fresh flowers to brighten up the place.

Oh and speaking of tomorrows events, I have made Honey Joys to be taken into girl-child’s class to be shared by all (hooray for simple sweet food that meets the class allergy criteria list), and because they were so easy to make I made a second batch to be eaten in the park.  When that was done, girl-child and her friend and I made an ice cream cake for her party.  OK, so we didn’t actually make an icecream cake, we partially melted some ice cream, added choc ripple biscuit chunks and chocolate toffee pieces, poured it in to moulds to re-freeze ready for the party!  Now all that is left to do is chop up some fresh fruit and vegetables and the party food is covered.  As for activities I think I will take a pile of dress ups to the park and they can all run around as fairies, princesses, mermaids or puppy dogs and make their own fun.

The easy part is done, trying to get 8 hours of work done in 5 hours or less tomorrow will be much more interesting but it will be done.  Fingers crossed I will get a better sleep tonight and not one that is filled with dreams/nightmares of me being injured.  I dreamt the same dream over and over all night – Some incident would occur (the incident would change with each variation of the dream) where the outcome was me being taken to the hospital for xrays of a broken ankle.  Of course knowing that I didn’t have the time or energy to be injured I had the hospital staff put a cast on my ankle that was black.  I then put a heel on it so I could pretend it was a boot and I was able to go about my life and work unhindered.  Naturally my walk was very suspect and ungainly looking so people were always questioning me about my strange footwear.  I must have been holding my foot as if it was in a cast all night long because today my calf muscle is as fatigued as if I had run a marathon in ill-fitting shoes!

Hopefully sleep tonight, aided by a drink or three will be more relaxing and sleep like, ready for a day of celebrating girl-child’s 6th birthday.

Edited to add:  OK, so I am clearly not back to normal yet.  I decided that I should post a link to the Honey Joy recipe as I had touted it as being so simple and delicious for the kids.  Doing this I noticed that right at the top of the recipe it says Preheat oven to 150°C. Oops I forgot that part, I haven’t cooked them yet!  How awesome am I?  A simple 7 line recipe and I forget the first and last of them.  I had better go do that now before I forget again.

Filling in the Gaps

I have had a few comments about my attire in the previous post so I guess rather than email the same story multiple times I can try and explain the history of the outfits and how they are important to me.

Outfit #1

Relaxing on our Wedding Day

My wedding dress.  I made my wedding dress and the dresses of my bridesmaids and flowergirl.  Now that really shouldn’t have been too difficult, so I had to make the whole wedding planning time more difficult by living and studying on the other side of the city at the time for 5 months leading up to the wedding.  That meant that I had to get man-child to cut out all the fabric during the week so that I could come home over the weekend and make the dresses as I tried to study.  I have to say that man-child did a much better job of cutting than I would have.  He also did a fantastic job of doing all the wedding planning that I didn’t have time for!

Oh and YES, I AM WEARING DOCS under my wedding dress, beautiful dark green 8 ups.  I did have gorgeous strappy white satin shoes with comfortable 3 inch heels that I had planned on wearing.  I packed my Docs to wear later in the day fearing that I would end up with sore feet and not enjoy the reception.  Just before we left for the ceremony I changed my mind about the heels figuring that since the wedding was outdoors my heels would sink into the lawn so I ditched the heels and pulled on the Docs.  Of course I hadn’t packed any ‘wedding socks’ so I wore white socks with blue and purple giraffes on them!  I am happy to say that I ended the day more than slightly intoxicated, with sunburn but my feet were great.

Outfit #2

Ready to Partay!

Man-child as Angus Young from ACDC, girl-child wanting to get in on the dressing up action as Tinkerbell, me as an All American Goddess and girl-child’s friend.

Now to explain the significance of this dress I have to fill you in on a bit of background, so here goes.

We have lived in this house for 6 years now and have some wonderful neighbours, people that perhaps we would never have met.  Actually if I am to be honest, I can’t imagine that our paths would ever have crossed had we not moved here.  It was one of these wonderful friends who celebrated his birthday on Friday and with whom we partied on Saturday.

Now to celebrate his birthday in style we, the guests, were asked to dress as someone we admire.  Now when the invitation arrived that seemed like an easy thing to do, but then when I sat down and thought about it, it wasn’t that easy.  Sure I could come up with someone I admire, but they wouldn’t be people anyone would actually recognise or that I could feel glamourous being dressed up as.  Then I found out that a bff of the birthday boy ws planning to fly in for the party.  Now this bff is also a good friend of mine, a former neighbour and someone that I truly admire.  I don’t want to tell here story here, it isn’t mine to tell, but I can fill you in on little bits.

You see this former neighbour is originally from Chicago, fell in love with an Aussie and moved here.  Illness and injury in her family caused her to move home.  In her time here she was involved in performing and pageants and I helped to create costumes and gowns for her to wear performing.  The gown that I am wearing in the photo is one that I re-made for her.  She didn’t like the original make of the dress, she felt like a foofy bride so I pulled it apart and re-made the skirt entirely and modified the bodice.  She took the gown over to Thailand to have beaded before I finished it.  If I do say so myself, the finished dress is quite amazing.  So amazing in fact that she won 2 major pageants wearing the dress.  I decided that I should go to the party as her, as I admire the the person that she is and the journey that she has followed in order to find herself.

This is what the dress should look like on!

PS – I am not as tall as the owner of the dress so even with 3 inch heels it was a little too long.  I really wish that I could have worn Docs – my feet were killing me and I ended up in bare feet for part of the evening.  Luckily the dress hid the classiness of my bare feet.  I am also not as voluptuous either so I didn’t have much to hold up the bodice!

Throughout this journey I have discovered that I really enjoy dressing up, now I need to find an excuse to really dress up again.

Weekly Winners #3

Well this has certainly been one of the craziest weeks I have ever lived through.  Not since the days of living in the sleep deprived world of a new parent have I had so little sleep, but for so many different reasons.  First there is the general insanity of school holidays to keep a person awake, then there was the puke bug that set up temporary residence here.

Next there was this wonderful distraction.

Barely 14 Hours Old

Closely followed by remembering and celebrating this wonderful day.

Going to the 'Chapel of Love'

And then partying in style!

The Fanciest Dress

It has been an amazing, eventful and exhausting week full of events that deserve a post all of their own.  For now the few photos will have to do, sleep is calling.

10 Years On

Who were those crazy kids getting married 10 years ago today?

Newlyweds

It has been a great 10 years riding the roller coaster of marriage.  I am glad to have shared the ride with you.

Love Del

News Just In

Welcome Billy, born at 2.01am on 30 September 2009

Beautiful Billy

Congratulations Lil Sis, awesome effort!